THE OMNIPRESENCE OF DIGITAL

As mentioned above, digitalisation is a major component of agritech. Most of the new technologies arriving on the market today rely on computers, microprocessors, sensors, interfaces, applications and even AI. They are increasingly able to ‘learn’ autonomously and adapt to changing circumstances. And as in other domains, such as smart cities, big data is set to play a decisive role too.

Contrary to popular belief, agriculture is already quite some way down the road of adopting digital technology. Like every other part of the economy, digitalisation is already a feature of every farm. «Farmers get weather and pest forecasts on their mobile phones, and some of the paperwork they have to complete is on digital platforms,» says Professor Robert Finger, head of the agricultural economics and policy group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich2 .

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS ALREADY IN USE

Various practical applications have been in use for years, including in Switzerland. These apps have, for example, improved the exchange of information, but the farming and food production sectors still need to communicate with each other much more effectively. It is also important to step up cooperation between all the parties who use agricultural data.

In 2018, the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) launched a Charter on the Digitalisation of Swiss Agriculture and Food Production. Drawn up following a mass consultation process, this charter sets out the main principles of the digital transition in agriculture3. This partnership paves the way for the development of digital applications designed to make better use of agricultural data. Following conclusive tests carried out in the Canton of Fribourg, at the beginning of 2021, FOAG took a further step towards digitalisation by launching the portal www.agate.ch to make it easier for farmers to manage data. Using this app, farmers can authorise the sharing of their data at any time, for example with the organisations managing quality labels.

These digital management platforms will enable farmers to keep records of their resources and assets to hand so that they can make use of them. By carrying out a comparative analysis with other farms, they are able to identify more quickly their strong points and areas of potential improvement and put this information to good use. There are many examples of apps already in use throughout the country (see page 22).

AI IS ALREADY A REALITY

As it is in the rest of the economy, artificial intelligence is also being used increasingly in agriculture. AI can be used, for example, to identify the location of different varieties of plants and monitor their growth using satellite images. Commodity traders also find this data extremely useful since it has the potential to predict the prices of different resources based on precise information about the volumes of crops still in the fields. Some fear that this will lead to speculation, but others see it as an opportunity, enabling traders to anticipate and pick the best options at the right time.

The app www.pollenn.ch, designed to be used by the general population, completes the picture. It provides a means of decentralised information gathering from field observations, using geolocation data to consolidate this information.

Exchanging agricultural data: several projects under way

IP-Suisse and Agrosolution are developing the Ada-Eda agricultural data exchange project. Its aim is to set up an agricultural data exchange platform for the controllable, secure exchange of data from the different data pools.

The Confederation’s project, dubbed DfD2, which involves the release of data to third parties and for third-party applications, will improve data exchange between public organisations (the Confederation and Cantons) and private bodies such as quality label organisations. The aim is to have a system where farmers need to input their data only once (in particular data about their farm) and where they can manage everything in one place, on the portal www.agate.ch.

WHAT IS AGRITECH? 13